Monday, January 23

Review – MasterBox kit 3598- LRDG in North Africa, WWII

Master box have sent us some more new releases – Released from them we had last month a Vietnam era set and today for something completely non-sequiter we will look in depth at the MasterBox kit 3598- LRDG in North Africa, WWII - depicting the LRDG (Long Range Desert Group) in North Africa, It’s fair to say that we don’t have enough figures from either of these eras so any release will be gladly received.....but will these?

MasterBox kit 3598- LRDG in North Africa, WWIIconsists of 5 figures from the LRDG of the Western desert in World War II. The box is the same layout as all other MB releases with the excellent painting in the front and the instructions and the paint call outs plus the sprue numbers on the rear of the package. The Box art shows a heavily armed truck that’s got stuck in the sand, and three crew members trying to free their vehicle, while perhaps an officer and an NCO look over their map trying to plan their route.

The most probable inspiration for this kit

All 5 figures and their ‘kit’ are included on the one sprue, each figure is made up of 5 parts, head, torso, legs and arms, the moulding is very sharp on parts, while there is a little bit of flash and some noticeable seams (mainly legs and shoulders) but these are all easily removed.

The mouldings on each figure are very nice, and the faces contain enough detail to be used straight OOTB, but just watch for flash and some seam lines, they look small enough to forget about, but under paint will stick out - so as long as you clean that up the figures will look just great.Included with the kit you get a pair of officers who are both in conversation and maybe some consternation about what forward plan of action to take. One has a map in his hand and his hip on his shoulder and is seen sporting and Arabic head dress as is his college who is pointing off to the right and has a pair of field glasses in his left hand. Both have shorts on and long sleeve uniform shirts - the officer pointing i has his sleeves rolled up and is wearing some very not standard desert army footwear.

Of the other three soldiers there is a driver - seen wearing some standard but and probably pretty warm i would say uniform with a thin V-necked jumper over it all and is sporting a water bottle at his right hip which is moulded separate.

There is a soldier holding on to a sand shield and is watching the digging ( the sand shield cannot hold itself up I suppose) and is seen again in a long sleeve top with shorts and ankle length boots with his thick socks rolled down the side of them. He has an ammo pouch and a water container and his Lee Enfield as well.

The last soldier is doing all of the hard work it seems whilst the rest look very busy! This soldier has of course an entrenching shovel in his part of the sprue and he has a pistol at his hip. He is sporting a beret which is a part of the head on the sprue and his torso had his long sleeved battle dress and long desert weight pants on.

The sand shield is very nicely moulded and suitably thin, and in way of the personal of the soldiers there is only a little, simply for the fact that these men had very little kit on them, most of it was stowed on their vehicle, there are side arms, water bottles and the like included. But all other “personals” you may have to outsource - there is a lot of stowage around on the market for Jeeps and soft skins and you may even have it with the jeep you are using anyway.

The weapons included are very well done - there are two Lee-Enfield S.M.L.E. rifles, two Thompson sub machine guns (both can either be fitted with the ‘gangster’ 100 round drum or the more common 30 round stick magazines) and there is a lovely Bren gun (and thankfully the bipod is moulded in a different way to the bi pod of the SAW in the Iraq checkpoint) which will greatly reduce the risk of them breaking, there are two bi pods included, one folded up and the other ‘in use’.

All in all this is a nice set that will bring life to any allied North Africa diorama – As usual never failing in the variety stakes again something truly different from Masterbox.

Nick Lloyd

Thanks to MasterBox for the review kit – here on their site are some pictures of the figures assembled but not painted for you to see what they look like in the flesh